Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning Blog

Month: November 2014

Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a holiday in 1863, with a proclamation that made the last Thursday of November a national day of thanks. But would you believe the person who wrote the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” played a major role in setting this precedent? Sarah Josepha Hale was the prominent writer, magazine editor and a strong supporter of female education who is often credited as the “Mother of Thanksgiving.”

Thanksgiving had long been celebrated in the United States before 1863, but there had not yet been a national day set aside as commemoration. Many of us have heard that the common mythology that the first “Thanksgiving” was celebrated by the pilgrims in 1621. For years, many Americans had celebrated their own version of the holiday, but it was often a religious event rather than a stable annual gathering. An increasing interest in a national holiday grew in the mid-19th century, but the holiday was much more sporadic. States celebrated the tradition anywhere from October to January, and it remained largely unobserved in the South.

Sarah Josepha Buell was born in 1788 to Captain Gordon Buell, a Revolutionary War officer, and Martha Whittlesay Buell, both of whom believed in the right to equal education for women and made sure their daughter was well-read. Hale married in 1813 but became a widow nine years later, left to care for five children on her own. She supported them with her passion for writing, establishing a literary reputation before becoming editor of the Ladies Magazine, which would become renamed as the popular Godey’s Ladies’ Book ten years later.

Hale believed that there were “too few holidays” and that there was a need for a national holiday that would allow people to set their differences aside and bring families together. For nearly 17 years, beginning in 1846, Sarah Hale wrote editorials urging readers to seek support for this idea. She wrote to five different presidents on the matter: Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and, finally, Abraham Lincoln. While her first attempts at establishing this holiday were unsuccessful, about a week after receiving Hale’s letter, Lincoln appointed Secretary of State William Seward to draft a proclamation which Lincoln hoped would bring people together and “heal the wounds of the nation.”

From all of us here at Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning, we hope you have a joyous Thanksgiving this year. Happy holidays from our family to yours!

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Winter is just about here in Loveland, and one of the best ways to ensure that your system runs optimally through our coldest months is to schedule maintenance. There are several benefits maintenance provides for your system, as we’ll outline below, but when you enroll in our Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning Energy Savings Maintenance Program, you’ll gain even more benefits. It’s recommended that you schedule maintenance annually, so if it’s been more than 12 months since your last maintenance appointment, call us today!

Benefits of Annual Heating Maintenance

  • Better energy efficiency – your heating system was designed to operate at a specific level of energy efficiency. When it is dirty, dusty and worn out from last season, it will have a hard time operating as it should. This means it can use more energy, which will drive up your energy costs.
  • Prevents repairs – during a maintenance appointment, your system is thoroughly inspected so that the technician can detect any existing or developing problems with your heating system. Minor issues, like frayed wiring or a worn belt, will be repaired during the appointment. Should a bigger issue be discovered, you’ll be alerted so that you can schedule repair. Maintenance allows you to get ahead of problems before they can turn into big and potentially costly ones.
  • Extends life of the equipment – maintenance helps keep your system in good working order. As such, it operates optimally, which helps prevent wear and tear and premature aging.
  • Improves comfort – a worn system can have a hard time achieving the temperature you set on your thermostat. With maintenance, your system will run as it should, so your comfort won’t be compromised.

Additional Benefits from Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning

When you sign up for our Energy Savings Maintenance Program, you’ll receive the following additional benefits:

  • Discounted repairs
  • Never pay overtime
  • Priority service/same day service guarantee

Maintenance for your heating system is good for both you and your system.

Contact Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning and talk to one of our specialists about how joining our Energy Savings Maintenance Program can help your home in Loveland!

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It’s chilly here in Colorado, and you’ve probably started running your home heating system. Are you already hearing complaints about your thermostat setting? Are you struggling to maintain energy efficiency while making everyone comfortable? There’s a great solution for both of these problems: a zone control system. With a zone control system, you are no longer fighting the battle of thermostat while trying to maintain your energy efficiency. Zone control systems are complex to install, so it’s important to hire a trained professional. Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning has been servicing customers since 1934, so if you are looking to install zone control heating in Fort Collins, call us today!

How Does a Zone Control System Work?

With a zone control system, you divide your home into different zones. They can be individual rooms, a group of rooms, or an entire floor – the decision is yours. Once you’ve designated these zones with your technician, motorized dampers are installed into the supply vents of your ductwork and thermostats are installed in each zone. The dampers and thermostats are wired to a main control panel, which manages the opening and closing of the dampers to maintain the temperatures set in each zone.

How Can a Zone Control System Benefit My Heating?

There are a few ways a zone control system can benefit your heating:

  • Better energy efficiency – with a zone control system, you use only the heating you need. A zone control system allows you to shut off the heating to areas you don’t need it – you can’t do this with regular ductwork. Using only the heat that you need results in less operation of your system, which helps reduce your energy usage.
  • Less wear and tear – with a zone control system, your heating system will most likely run less, helping to prevent early wear-and-tear issues to your system.
  • Extends the life of your system – the amount of work your heating system has to do can be reduced with a zone control system; less work means less wear, which can help extend the life of the system.

Zone heating in Fort Collins allows you to customize your heating while improving your home’s energy efficiency.

If you are interested in seeing what a zone control system can do for you, call Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning today and schedule an appointment with one of our experts.

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At first, it may be difficult to understand what would make someone choose ductless heating for their home. Central heating just seems so much more convenient. There’s just one thermostat that controls the whole house. You can be at the same comfortable room temperature no matter where you are in your home. Why give that up for a unit that can only heat one room? Well, read on to find out what you’ve been missing.

Why Ductless Heating?

A ductless heating system is essentially a heat pump. It consists of two units, one inside and one outside. The outside unit siphons heat from the air, while the inside one circulates that heat through the room. It’s called a ductless system because it is installed directly in the room that you want heated, rather than piping in the warm air from elsewhere in the house.

The first reason you’d want a ductless heating system is energy efficiency. Systems that use ducts often lose 20-30% of their heat on average to leaks in those same ducts. That translates to a substantially higher heating bill for you. Ductless systems essentially have no travel time between the heater and the destination, meaning that no heat is wasted in transit between locations. Making a switch will likely cause an appreciable decrease in your heating bills as a result. Since ductless systems are only meant to really serve one room, you can also save money by only heating rooms that need heating. What’s the point of heating the guest room if no one is occupying it?

The second reason to consider an upgrade to a ductless system is flexibility. Each ductless unit is operated by its own thermostat. This not only allows you to ignore rooms that you aren’t currently occupying. It also allows different occupants of the house to pick a room temperature that is most comfortable for them. No more fighting over the single thermostat that controls the heater because you have different comfort levels than your spouse, relatives, or roommates!

If you are thinking about upgrading to a ductless heating system, call Fort Collins Heating & Air Conditioning. We install ductless heating throughout the Loveland area.

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